Neonatal Unit Party Celebrates Life Expansion Plans Announced

August 12, 1985|By Ellen Stein, Staff Writer

There was more than one proud mama and proud papa at Holy Cross Hospital on Sunday as a very special reunion marked many happy returns for the ``alumni`` of the hospital`s neonatal intensive care unit.

The third annual celebration was a chance for mothers to meet other mothers who had shared the agonizing minutes not knowing whether their newborns were going to live. It was a chance for fathers to meet other fathers who had paced the floors of the unit for days and weeks longer than they had expected.

It was a chance for the children, many still not aware of the reason for the party, to chase balloons, eat ice cream and cake, sip fruit punch and coo at all the attention.

And it was a chance for the nurses and doctors of the neonatal unit to see and coddle their former charges under much better circumstances.

``This is what you call job satisfaction,`` said nurse Janet McKenzie as she hugged Eddie Liston, who spent almost three days in the unit after he was born with lung problems 3 1/2 months ago.

``To see them running, playing, laughing like normal children is great.``

There have been 350 ``graduates`` of the neonatal unit, which opened in July 1982, said Dr. Shameen Siddiqi, director of the unit.

``I would say half of them would not have survived if they had not gone to a neonatal unit,`` she said.

Holy Cross Hospital, just southwest of Commercial Boulevard and North Federal Highway in Fort Lauderdale, has one of four neonatal units in the county. Hospital officials used Sunday`s celebration to announce the expansion of its unit from four to six beds.

About 250 families came to the celebration, and, as the words on one of the huge sheet cakes said, the main topic was, ``My, how nice we`ve grown!``

In several cases, the event brought double pleasure to the nursing staff. At least three families brought twins to the reunion.

Gratitude and appreciation were expressed to the hospital staff by all of the families. Many parents have kept in contact with the staff and said the medical care and close attention their children received was the reason they are alive today.

``They saved her life,`` Charlene Hamilton of Wilton Manors said, pointing to her daughter, Mandy, who was in the hospital unit for 3 1/2 months.

Mandy will be a year old Aug. 24. She was born three months early and weighed just over a pound at birth.

``She`s the smallest baby they ever cared for,`` Hamilton said. ``She couldn`t breathe. She was on a respirator for six weeks.``

``Her chest was no bigger than a man`s fist,`` said Mandy`s father, Ty.